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< NovDec 2000
	Hotline
Touring for MS

A few days after she turned 21, doctors told Andrea McLennan she had a disease for which there is no cure--multiple sclerosis (MS). Her good health taken away, McLennan reassessed the days before her. She wanted to spend her time doing what she loved, with the people important to her and she wanted to give something back. On May 18 she did just that, beginning a sea kayak journey from Seattle to Vancouver with some of her closest friends. And in the months prior, she launched a campaign that raised more than $15,000 for MS.

Though initially shattered by the news, McLennan was never hopeless. Instead, it only increased her resolve to live life on her own terms. She quit her job, moved, and dropped out of business school. “It’s something I’d never thought of,” she says. “I’m still struggling to take it all in. But I definitely don’t sweat the little things anymore. I value my relationships, and I’ve become more goal-oriented and determined to enjoy life and make stuff happen.”

What she’s making happen now is her sea kayak journey. “She’s a person on a mission,” said Merrill Ringold, executive director of the King County MS Association, the beneficiary of the fundraiser. “Few people are as focused in what they want to accomplish.” McLennan has both hands in every part of the process. She started by calling friends, asking them for help in their areas of expertise. She then created letterhead, built a Web site, secured gear for the trip and started getting donations. By May word was out. “The trip was very successful in the publicity it’s garnered,” says Ringold. “MS has gotten more news coverage in the past three months than the past three years combined.”

McLennan’s group pushed hard their first day, trading the frenzy of phone calls for gray whales and islands. The trip ended in Vancouver on June 4 after 160 miles. “I challenged a lot of my own misconceptions and limits I set for myself having MS,” says McLennan, who’s now working as an environmental scientist and hasn’t had a relapse in two years. And her trip has done wonders for those in her same boat. “Hope is really what people need,” says Ringold. “They need to know that people don’t die from MS, that they live with it very successfully. Andrea is a perfect example--paddling almost 200 miles, and living a very full life.”

--Nate Johnson